ADS-L on Language Log

[Wilson Gray]

Remember that old cartoon - from The NY-er, I believe - featuring two
profs? It went something like this:

Prof. A to Prof. B:

"It's obvious."

Nevertheless, having second thoughts, A proceeds to fill two walls of
blackboard with abstruse mathematical calculations. After he finishes,
he turns back to B and reiterates:

"Yes. It's obvious."

What can you do?

-Wilson

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Doug Harris <cats22 at frontiernet.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Doug Harris <cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET>
> Subject:      Re: ADS-L on Language Log
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> What a _wonderful_ way to put it: ". . . editors have to be,
> in a sense, professionally thick-headed."
> As a long-time editor, I know just what you mean.
> But let me ask you this: Do you ever find that, in your role
> as a consumer, you are all but unable to complete, say, an
> assembly task, or -- more often these days -- something the
> 'instructions' for your software imply even a dunderhead
> should be able to do with relative ease?
> And I'm not just talking about the 'instructions' written
> by someone who's better-left-unknown as author of items cited
> on 'chinglish' web sites.
> Many instructions written by native speakers of American
> English manage equally obtuse constructions. Increasingly,
> I'm finding them on web pages, where the designers and their
> clue-writing colleagues _had_ no clue where navigations are
> concerned.
> There. Done. (As Ellen Goodman told herself when declaring
> a job, well, done. Boston Globe, Aug 8.) Another rant out of
> the way!
> dh
>
>
> ----
> Yet I've never stopped asking, "Why don't you understand the clear
> meaning of what people are saying?"
> ----
>
> Points well made, obviously, but when setting an editorial policy,
> sometimes "Of course that's what they mean" isn't enough. We're in
> the business of providing factual information about medications and
> health conditions, and one does well to keep one's expressions not
> only legally defensible but also not open to debate. We avoid usages
> that are likely to distract some readers because they are subject to
> (perhaps unwarranted) hote debate, and we don't use expressions that
> are, strictly speaking, mathematically improper (as "X times smaller
> than" is) because "everybody can understand that" simply isn't good
> enough -- partly because it's often not true, and partly because we
> want to make sure what we're saying is unambiguous, defensible, and
> not distracting.
>
> To put it another way: Of course I can understand what a person who
> says "This is five times smaller than that" almost certainly means.
> And any linguist has not only the luxury but the obligation to look
> at that and accept it and sort out just _why_ something like that is
> clear. But an editor does _not_ have that luxury; editors have to be,
> in a sense, professionally thick-headed -- they have to anticipate
> what things might be unclear, distracting, or otherwise controversial
> to enough readers that they should avoid them. (And, on the other
> hand, we have an obligation not to prefer inelegant or otherwise
> hard-to-read usages simply because a small set of people think the
> more elegant, smoother-reading usages are wrong.)
>
> And there are perfectly suitable, clear and cogent alternative usages
> to "X times smaller than." If there weren't, that would put a
> different complexion on things. But an editorial policy is not a
> guide to going around judging _other people_ correct or incorrect,
> right or foolish; it is simply a guide for the content that _we_
> produce to ensure that it is the most clear and effective English.
> And while "five times smaller than" is in fact a phrase of a type I
> have myself used in casual speech, I would be derelict in my duty as
> an editor or factual information on important topics (health being
> one such, I rather think) if I were not to prefer "80% smaller than"
> or "20% the size of" or any of the other available expressions that
> will stand up in a math classroom and, for that matter, a court of
> law.
>
> Incidentally, lest I be subject to accusations of craven acquiescence
> to prescriptivist dogmas, allow me to assure those who are still
> reading that our editorial policy equally explicitly allows split
> infinitives, sentence-opening conjuctions, sentence-closing
> prepositions, etc. We're very pragmatic. We want the text to read
> well, smoothly, and clearly. We're not trying to be prissy, just
> reliable (which means defensible) and readable (which also means that
> it shouldn't drag the reader's attention away from what is being
> communicated).
>
> Nor, by the way, just in case there's any question of it, have I ever
> thought that the usage in question was new.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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